Facebook: The Best Channel for Getting Event App Downloads

If you’re active on social media, using Facebook to promote your event app will be second nature. If you invest in adds and paid promotions, things get even easier. To simplify this post, we’ve broken things down into two parts: before you launch the app and after you launch. There is also a bonus section about paid promotions.

Using Paid Promotion on Facebook to Drive App Downloads

With organic content reach levels at an all time low, paid promotions are necessary to connect with your target market. So if you want to reach a sensible number of your fans, you’ll need to invest. Advertising on Facebook can be both creative and cheap.

Phase 1 | Before the Launch

1. Get a team together – Determine whose going to quarterback all the posting/tracking efforts.

3. Research your influencers – Compile the links/handles of your event influencers. Extend the reach of all your Facebook campaigns by involving them in the process. Check out the post we’ve written all about involving influencers here.

4. Create event app related posts – Use an editorial calendar. It’s one central place for all your recent and future Facebook posts. They also work great for tracking analytics. This is where you design the content and the copy of your ads and posts before they go out.

Phase 2 | After the Launch

5. Update your editorial calendar – Maintaining a detailed editorial calendar lets you plan ahead and makes your life easier. Take a look at tools like Hootsuite. They let you build and then schedule your whole content calendar ahead of time and are great for tracking analytics.

6. Track your impact – After you launch your event app, test and measure how well Facebook is working to drive downloads. You need to uncover how each post you make affects the number of accounts that get created in your app. Determine which type of post, or which ads are performing best, then double down on them. This is only a guide after all.

How to Target Your Facebook Ads

The ability to target Facebook users with ads is pretty immense. It uses click history, words they’ve used in status updates, and data collected elsewhere. All this data builds an accurate profile of every user. Exactly what you need to be successful at driving downloads of your app.

Who You Should Target for Promoting Your Event App:

1. People who like your Facebook page 2. Friends of people who like your Facebook page 3. People who have attended your Facebook events

And at a more sophisticated level

4. Custom Audiences – an audience you can target based on your email list. Don’t have an email list? Start here. 5. Lookalike audiences – users that Facebook thinks look like the people in your Custom Audiences

Buying the Right Facebook Ads

Ad Goal – Because the main goal of the campaign is to drive app downloads, choose to display your ads as Mobile News Feed ads. These guarantee deliverability. But they also make sure the people seeing your ads can execute on the call to action.

Bid Type – Because the goal of the campaign is downloads, set your bid type to Clicks (CPC). Facebook will optimize your ads to appear to the people most likely to complete the goal.

Building an Ad – According to Facebook, the recommended image size ensures your image always looks high quality. The recommended text length is how many characters of ad copy could be displayed on smaller screens.

Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels

Image ratio: 1.9:1

Text: 90 characters

Your image may not include more than 20% text

The star rating from the App Store or Google Play store will automatically show on your ad. For more information about these guidelines, see Facebook’s Ad Guide here.

Boosting a Post

The simple way to gain paid reach on Facebook is with a ‘boosted post’. These are ads, because you pay for exposure beyond organic reach. Although not as effective as newsfeed ads, they do boost the reach of your content.

Facebook Ad Examples

Sometimes you need a little inspiration. AdEspresso has fantastic online resource where you can search over 59K example ads. AdEspresso is also a great tool for managing your ad campaigns. After they were acquired by Hootsuite, the platform became even more powerful for event managers.

Conclusion

You need to use Facebook if you want to successfully launch your event app. Play around with paid promotions and measure your success at every turn.

Have questions about this guide or looking for ways you can use social media to drive app downloads? As always, drop us a line, we’re here to help!